Sunday, August 8, 2010

A transition to understand

The altitude one scales in life is propelled by aptitude and sustained by attitude. Aspiration, desire and commitment are easy to say, but difficult to practice, as it requires tremendous amount of self-discipline. I have been observing that children, in general, have this remarkable character of being disciplined, and can learn things at a faster rate than adults. In recent days, two things have caught my attention in the context of the above discussion:

1) The SUPER30 organization in Patna, which hunts for 30 meritorious talents from among the economically backward sections of the society and shapes them for India's most hyped-up examination of IIT-JEE. In the last seven years, it seems it has produced hundreds of IITians from extremely poor background. Hats off to Anand Kumar who is running this organization, and hats off to the students from poor background who are cracking the JEE. Although, I don’t endorse these rat-race examinations, I admire people who take up the challenge to write this examination and get through it successfully. It’s a hard task, I must admit. If you observe many students coming out of this organization, they are extremely hard working with a sustained frame of mind to achieve a goal. Indeed, they inspire me.

2) The other thing in the same context is the reality-shows on television that showcases talent of Indian children. Some children do remarkable things (including dance, singing etc.). Probably, parents' encouragement is vital in this, but children put up a show with an air of enthusiasm, confidence and commitment, which one can hardly see in the grownups.

I have not yet found an answer to the following questions:

Is it difficult to learn something new as you grow older or is it just a matter of attitude?What is really happening to the attitude when there is a transition from adolescence to adulthood?

Just think about a situation when adults start working as well as they would have done during their childhood, that can make a lot of difference. maybe it is time for us to grow our minds younger, perhaps, like the intellectual case of Benjamin Button.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

On the slower lane…

To learn we need information. Our thinking is vastly influenced by what we are informed of, and when we are fed with a large pool of information, gaining accurate knowledge is not trivial. Since last decade or so, communication and information retrieval have been revolutionized by internet. Now we are in situation where there is an excess of information, and the major task is how to find the required knowledge from a large pool of information. There may be more and more accurate search engines which can filter and narrow down your query, but the major question is how does your mind differentiate between accurate information from the inaccurate one?

Perhaps, the answer lies in spending more time on the information we acquire, and here lies the major problem. There is a conflict in our mind, where our thinking has to be adapted to the rate at which the information flows in. As a result of this, we need to think faster, learn faster and decide faster to keep up the pace. This implies that the average time on thinking, learning and decision making is now proportional to the rate of information flow. But from previous experience and history, we very well know that accuracy in thinking, learning and decision making critically depends on the amount of time we spend on it. It is as simple as this: longer the time we spend with data, more information can be retrieved out of it. But now, we are in a situation where we need to hasten the processing time. So, the problem is: how does one acquire accurate knowledge by keeping pace with the rate of input of information?

May be, to improve our ability to judge and prioritize, we need to slow down our lives. Yes, SLOOOOW DOWN…. Rushing through may be a requirement of our environment, but going on a slower lane gives us opportunity to foresee a mistake which we may make by going faster. A deeper and longer thought on this issue is required URGENTLY!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Pavan2.0

It’s been quite a while since I have written a blog. Married life and a new job @ new place are good excuses for that.

Life in Pune has been decent; it’s a new environment for me and we are slowly adapting to it. The city is very hilly, fairly industrialized, flooded with students, and people are friendly. The cost of living is high, but a variety of food is available, and weather is warmer than west Lafayette, Barcelona and Bengaluru, but the nights are very similar to Bengaluru. The local city transport (bus and auto) is bad, which gives you a good reason to buy a vehicle (now I have a cycle but may graduate to a motor!)

Job-wise, the transformation from a post-doc to an assistant prof. has been really exciting. Now that I am in an institute where the emphasis is not only on research, but also on teaching, the prospects for innovation and creativity are high. Come this August, I will be part of biophysics course, which is essentially an interdisciplinary subject (reflecting our institute's agenda). I would also lecture in an advanced laboratory course of physics/physical chemistry. Since the semester has not yet begun, I haven’t interacted much with the students, but whomsoever I have spoken to are excited to be part of science, and this is indeed a pleasant thing. Most of the faculties are young, knowledgeable and dynamic, and all of them believe that they can make a difference by incorporating research with teaching into their work. This is a new experiment in Indian science, and we are really excited to be part of this. More in coming weeks…..

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Mahatma and the Valentine


Anger is an enemy within. This is one part of human nature we can happily mutate. In the backdrop of the recent mishap in Pune, I see the relevance of Gandhiji’s principle of peace growing. Most of the people feel that Gandhism is no more relevant in the present day context. I myself have been conflicting with this conception over the years, but now I have no doubt that Gandhiji idea was an eternal thought of superior quality. The reason why Gandhiji’s peace model ‘seems to be’ out-of-date is because of its difficulty to implement. The idea was seen as irrelevant even during Gandhiji’s contemporary days, just because it needed a huge change in the mindset of human thought. And any change to explore the ‘out-of-comfort’ zone is repelled by us. To reach a level of maturity that the Mahatma attained, it needs sheer commitment, patience, intelligence and above all tremendous amount of inner strength, which are uncommon combinations today. The relevance of a peace model should not only be judged on the difficulty of implementation, but also on the fruitful solution it can bring in, over a long period of time. The greatest way to win over the mind of an opponent is not by seeding a thought of conflict, but by enlightening them by the sheer magnitude of resolve to sustain thought of peace, not just outside, but also within. This idea consumes time, but is and always will be the permanent way to reach equilibrium.

As I write this blog, most of the world is celebrating Valentine’s Day. I welcome any thought which binds people together, and the concept of the day has a positive impact, especially on youth. However, there are now extreme schools of thoughts either opposing or supporting this day. At one end, this day has been well utilized by the corporate world to cash-in on human emotions by hyping this day. On the other end, it has been rejected as un-cultured. The reality is somewhere in between. My thought is the following: Yes, by all means celebrate love, not by restoring to the materialistic rewards of pleasantries, but by ensuring that you not only love your loved ones more, but also love those people whom you hate. After all, this is the bottom line of Mahatma’s thought.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010